The Thought Project Podcast is recorded at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. In this space, we talk with faculty and graduate students about the big thinking and big ideas generating ground breaking research --  informing New Yorkers and the world. Hosted by Tanya Domi.

The Thought Project

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Art History Lectures

In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, Georgie Humphries, a Ph.D. candidate in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center, talks to science journalist and CUNY Newmark J-School graduate Saugat Bolakhe about her work to fend off toxic algal blooms.  

Humphries delves into the fascinating yet alarming world of phytoplankton – microscopic algae that produce up to 80% of the Earth’s oxygen and serve as the foundation of the marine food web. Certain species of phytoplankton, however, are behind harmful algal blooms. These blooms, which are being fueled by climate change and nutrient pollution, threaten marine life and human health, with consequences ranging from manatee deaths to water supply contamination.  

Humphries describes how she and fellow scientists at the Graduate Center’s Advanced Science Research Center are monitoring and addressing this growing scourge as they seek to preserve our oceans and protect public health. 

Listen in to learn more about how Graduate Center scientists are safeguarding our planet and its people.

Fighting Toxic Algal Bloooms to Protect Our Oceans

In this Domestic Violence Awareness Month episode of The Thought Project, Tanya Domi speaks with Jessica Morak, executive director of institutional equity and chief diversity officer at the CUNY Graduate Center, about her work to implement new Title IX policies, which prohibit sex-based discrimination in schools. 

The updated policy includes new protections for pregnant individuals and expanded employee obligations for support and information sharing. The conversation touches on broader issues of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, sex trafficking, and digital abuse. Morak shares insights from her past roles as a prosecutor for the Bronx district attorney’s office and her work at Sanctuary for Families, focusing on combating gender-based violence and providing holistic support for student survivors. The discussion highlights ongoing challenges and systemic issues, emphasizing the importance of addressing gender-based violence through education, legal frameworks, and comprehensive policies.

Listen in to learn more.

What the New Title IX Means for Gender-Based Violence Prevention

In this episode of The Thought Project, we bring you a Celestial Bodies podcast recorded by science journalist Rebecca Rand and astronomer Mark Popinchalk in which they explore the surprising connection between trees and cosmic events. 

Popinchalk, a CUNY Graduate Center alumnus (Ph.D. ’23, Physics) and postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History, discusses how trees serve as natural records of space activity, storing traces of radiocarbon from solar flares and supernovae. By examining tree rings, scientists can trace these cosmic events back through history, linking radiocarbon spikes to phenomena like the northern lights observed centuries ago. 

Through their conversation, Rand, a graduate of the CUNY Newmark J-School, and Popinchalk shed light on how trees help us understand outer space and the and the potential risks posed by high-radiation events. 

Listen in to learn more.

Celestial Bodies: What Trees Reveal About Outer Space

In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, Tanya Domi talks with Professor Van Tran about the launch of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Ph.D. and master’s programs in Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies (BRES), the first of their kind in the New York metropolitan area. 

Tran, a sociologist who led the development of the programs with Professor Martin Ruck, discusses the mission to expand multidisciplinary research on race and ethnicity and train the next generation of scholars and practitioners. Funded in part by the Mellon Foundation, the programs build on CUNY’s longstanding commitment to ethnic studies. Tran shares how the programs will prepare students to address complex social issues, with coursework that integrates sociology, history, and various humanities and social sciences disciplines. The BRES programs, Tran says, will provide students with a comprehensive understanding of race and ethnicity, equipping them to make significant contributions in academia and in fields such as public health, medicine, education, law, and social work.

Listen in to learn more. 


BRES at the CUNY Graduate Center

In this episode of The Thought Project, Tanya Domi speaks with Charles Tien, a professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter, about the implications of the 2024 Presidential elections. 

They discuss Donald Trump’s historic re-election, shifting voter demographics, and parallels with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. Drawing comparisons to Reagan’s landslide victory and its impact on U.S. politics, Tien explains how economic anxiety and inflation influenced voting patterns. The conversation also delves into the challenges ahead for governance in a closely divided Congress and the potential impact of Trump’s return to the presidency. The conversation offers a nuanced look at the new political landscape and the future of American democracy.

Listen in to learn more. 


How Economic Anxiety Shaped the Election With Charles Tien

Our third release will be this meditative masterpiece by Takashi Kokubo. 

Containing three tracks from the Sanyo air conditioner classic 'Get At The Wave' with a previously unreleased 15 minute 'Ocean Breeze' on the b side. 

Available for pre-order @ www.lagrecords.com

Symphony Of Glory And Wind

To explain the dynamics of gentrification and its relationship to real estate companies, city planners and labor unions and how it has taken hold in New York City and many other major cities in the United States is Samuel Stein, a geography Ph.D. candidate at The Graduate Center, CUNY and an Urban Studies Instructor at Hunter College. His work focuses on the politics of urban planning with an emphasis on housing, real estate and gentrification in New York City, which is captured in his new book: Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State (Verso, March 2019). Stein’s book tour launches this evening in New York City. Stein reflects on the failed New York City Amazon deal in The Guardian penned on Feb. 23: “New York’s Dance with Amazon Shows Us How to Fight for a City’s Future.”

The Thought Project - Episode 44 - Interview with Samuel Stein

Nancy K. Miller is a distinguished professor of English, French, and comparative literature and teaches in the M.A. Program in Women's and Gender studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including, most recently, My Brilliant Friends (Columbia University Press, 2019), which tells the story of the deep friendships she formed with Carolyn Heilbrun, Naomi Schor, and Diane Middlebrook — colleagues in the academy who tragically passed away between 2001 and 2007. During the writing of the book, Miller is confronted with her own mortality when she is diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer — perhaps confronting the end of her life without her dear friends. These friendships are complicated and interlocking, foundational to Miller’s life and her identities as a scholar and as a feminist, which were forged at the beginning of second-wave feminism during the 1970s.

The Thought Project - Episode 46 - Interview with Nancy K. Miller

by Terry Kurgan in conversation with Tamar Garb and Eva Hoffman

Terry Kurgan’s book begins with a family snapshot made by her Polish grandfather in 1939 on the eve of the war. Presenting this evocative image as a repository of multiple histories—public, private, domestic, familial and generational—she sets off on a series of meditations on photography that give us startling insights into how photographs work: what they conceal, how they mislead, what provocations they contain. Each essay takes up the thread of the story of her family’s epic journey across Europe as they flee—country by country—Nazi occupation, until they reach Cape Town, South Africa. But Kurgan takes detours, circles back, diverts attention elsewhere, enriching and also disrupting the narrative with digressions on the way Google has changed our relationship to photography, on her grandfather’s eloquent daily journals, on the shipboard flirtations of her fascinating grandmother, on vanity, on self representation, on loss and return, home and exile. Kurgan’s richly satisfying essays are part memoir, part travelogue, part analysis and they demonstrate her sophisticated understanding of a medium that has long engaged her as an artist.

Everyone is Present - Terry Kurgan in conversation with Tamar Garb and Eva Hoffman

by Anthony Gardner (University of Oxford), Magdalena Radomska (Art History Institute, Adam Mickiewicz University inPoznań), Marko Ilić (SSEES, UCL). Moderated by Maja and Reuben Fowkes (Post-socialist Art Centre, IAS, UCL)

This panel discussion brought together contributors to the special issue of Third Text on Actually Existing Artworlds of Socialism and guest respondents to debate the legacy of the socialist system for contemporary art and politics.

'Research into the institutional settings and practicalities of artistic production during the socialist period is giving rise to more nuanced accounts that complicate the distinctions made between the heroism of the neo-avant-garde and complicity of official artists, revealing an art system that was more variegated, flexible and generative than has been widely assumed. This panel examines the far-reaching implications of the understanding that artists from across the stylistic and ideological spectrum were productively imbricated in the calculated opacities and unlikely rapprochements of the ‘actually existing’ artworlds of socialism. Discussion of the specific traits of Eastern bloc artworlds and the key differences between art institutional landscapes across the Cold War divide opens onto the critical question as to what might be salvaged from the historical experience of art under socialism. Furthermore, if post-socialism is conceived not as a timeless category but as a specific historical period, then what are the prospects for the socialist project in the new social and political circumstances of unfolding global disorder?

IAS Book Launch: Another Artworld Was Possible - the Socialist Art System Revisited

by Avril Alba, Yasmin Khan, and Tom Lawson. Chaired by Tamar Garb.

This panel discussion was jointly organised by the IAS and the German Historical Institute London (GHIL), and was part of the GHIL's Contested Histories seminar series (summer term 2019). Please find the programme here and the poster here.

This panel asked how do colonial history, the Second World War, and the Holocaust intersect? As Britain embarks on the creation of a National Holocaust Memorial, calls have been made for a memorial to and a museum of Britain’s historical involvement in slavery, its colonial past, and their legacies. Meanwhile, scholarship such as Michael Rothberg’s Multidirectional Memory has argued that Holocaust remembrance also has the potential to open up routes for commemorating other contested national pasts. This panel enabled a dialogue between scholars of the Holocaust, colonialism, and the British Empire to reflect on national and transnational legacies.

Multidirectional Memory? National Holocaust Memorials and (Post-)Colonial Legacies

by Chris Knight (Anthropology, UCL)and Jackie Walker. Chaired by Tamar Garb (IAS)

With the publication of ‘The Responsibility of Intellectuals’ half a century ago, Noam Chomsky burst onto the US political scene as a leading critic of the war in Vietnam. Privilege, he argues, brings with it the responsibility to tell the truth and expose lies, but our intellectual culture only pays lip-service to this ideal. The essay has been described as ‘the single most influential piece of anti-war literature’ of the Vietnam war period.

Since then, Chomsky has continued to equip a growing international audience with the facts and arguments needed to understand – and change – our world. According to The New York Times, Chomsky ‘may be the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet today.’

This book revisits ‘The Responsibility of Intellectuals’ half a century on. It includes six new essays written to celebrate Chomsky’s famous intervention and explore its relevance in today’s world. Nicholas Allott, Chris Knight, Milan Rai and Neil Smith have studied and written about Chomsky’s thought for many years, while Craig Murray and Jackie Walker describe the personal price they have paid for speaking out. The book finishes with Chomsky’s recollections of the background to the original publication of his essay, followed by extensive commentary from him on its 50th anniversary.

IAS Book Launch: The Responsibility of Intellectuals

Elisabeth Lebovici, art historian and art critic offers a response from the context of her book – ‘Being There – AIDS Activism at the end of Twentieth Century’. This is part of a Preview Seminar: Protest - Remembering Derek Jarman, that marked the 25th anniversary of Jarman’s death and reflects on What Jarman’s legacy is, as an artist and activist, today? Special guests come together to discuss the creative worlds, controversies and friendships that surround Jarman’s pioneering - interdisciplinary practice.

TRACK 7: Seminar Programme - Part Two / Protest, Outrage & Remembrance
Elisabeth Lebovici, art historian and art critic; Being There – AIDS Activism at the end of Twentieth Century.  Lebovici offers a wider perspective on the global struggles against HIV/AIDS, and its integration into art histories, discourses and practices - as an important framework to consider Jarman’s activist and artistic legacy.
About Speaker
Elisabeth Lebovici is an art historian and art critic, whose research, writings and lectures investigate the intersection of feminism, gender studies, queer politics, LGBTQ activism, and contemporary art. Among numerous publications, she is the author, of a new book Ce que le sida m’a fait: art et activisme à la fin du XXe siècle (What AIDS has done to me. Art and Activism at the End of the 20th Century) Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2017. The book restores the voices of friends in the fight against AIDS; articulating the “I” and the “we” of then and now; examining facts and affects little known to the French and European public; analysing the epidemic of representation which followed the emergence of AIDS: such is the agenda of this book, conceived by Lebovici as a “discourse on method” in which the personal is always political, and public and private spheres are closely intertwined. Engaged alongside French and American AIDS activists, Elisabeth Lebovici was a privileged observer, as an art historian and journalist, of the debates of the 1980s and 1990s.

Further Information
A range of iconic works were explored in the context of the highly anticipated IMMA exhibition, Derek Jarman, PROTEST! that opened on 15 November 2019. This significant retrospective offers the timely opportunity to explore many interdisciplinary aspects of Jarman’s life and work. Through Jarman’s work, the seminar traces key social, political and cultural shifts of the period 1960 – 1990s. Exploring many of the socially volatile topics that charged Jarman’s activities, his feelings of alienation, associations with the punk movement, and protests by intellectuals against the repressive totalitarian state of Thatcher England and Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act. Through the continuum of ‘Protest’ , topics of exploration include: Painting and Life; Memoir and Writing; the HIV / AIDS crisis; Stigma and Cultural memory; Protest and Personal Freedom and LGBTQ activism.

Speakers included: Sean Kissane (Curator, IMMA); Olivia Laing (author / writer, UK); Elisabeth Lebovici (art historian, critic, France): Dr Robert Mills (Professor, Medieval Studies, UCL, UK): Charlie Porter (writer, Turner Prize Juror, UK); Richard Porter (artist / Pilot Press, UK); Jon Savage (writer, broadcaster, UK); Dr Catherine Silverstone (Reader, Queen Mary University of London); Peter Tatchell (Human rights campaigner, UK), Karim White (Thames & Hudson Publishing, UK) and Tonie Walsh (LGBT rights activist, journalist, Ireland). Invited curators, artists, writers, educators and activists share their views on Jarman’s contemporary relevance and the precarious cycle of politics today.
This seminar took place on 14 November 2019 at IMMA. Return to the dedicated playlist ‘SEMINAR PROTEST - REMEMBERING DEREK JARMAN’, to listen back to other speaker’s responses and presentations.
Image Credits: Derek Jarman. Courtesy Basilisk Communications Ltd

SEMINAR: PROTEST - REMEMBERING DEREK JARMAN (7) / Elisabeth Lebovici

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